National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors 66 Canal Center Plaza, Suite 302 Alexandria, Virginia 22314 Assessment #3 Technology and Human Trafficking September 2016 Alexandria, Virginia Third in a Series of Eight Briefs on the Use of Technology in Behavioral Health This work was developed under Task 2.1.1 of NASMHPD’s Technical Assistance Coalition contract/task order, HHSS28342001T and funded by the Center for Mental Health Services/Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration of the Department of Health and Human Services through the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors.
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National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors 66 Canal Center Plaza, Suite 302
Alexandria, Virginia 22314
Assessment #3
Technology and Human Trafficking
September 2016
Alexandria, Virginia
Third in a Series of Eight Briefs on the Use of Technology in Behavioral Health
This work was developed under Task 2.1.1 of NASMHPD’s Technical Assistance Coalition
contract/task order, HHSS28342001T and funded by the Center for Mental Health
Services/Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration of the Department of
Health and Human Services through the National Association of State Mental Health
Program Directors.
Technology and Human Trafficking 2
Technology and Human Trafficking
Technical Writer: Stephanie Hepburn, J.D.
Author of:
Human Trafficking Around the World: Hidden in Plain Sight Conversation with My Daughter About Human Trafficking
Women’s Roles and Statuses the World Over
National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors 66 Canal Center Plaza, Suite 302, Alexandria, VA 22314
703-739-9333 FAX: 703-548-9517 www.nasmhpd.org
September 2016
This working paper was supported by the Center for Mental Health Services/Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration of the
The National Human Trafficking Resource Center Hotline and the BeFree Text Line................................................................................................................. 6
Victim-Centered and Caller-Led Specialists............................................................9
NHTRC Data Tracking and Analysis Software.................................................... 10
Last year, in what seemed like science fiction, emergency room medical professionals, at a
hospital not identified to protect patient information and safety, encountered a patient who
was adamant her trafficker had tagged her with a monitoring chip. After some skepticism,
the medical staff discovered that, indeed, imbedded in the woman’s side was a tiny radio-
frequency identification chip—the same type of microchip used to tag pets.
The hospital staff was dumbfounded, but this discovery would not have been shocking to
anti-trafficking experts. Technology is friend and foe to the anti-trafficking effort. It is
where traffickers lurk, target, and monitor their victims. Traffickers use the Internet to
recruit victims through employment opportunity posts, and as Internet use becomes
increasingly commonplace, so too does its use for recruitment. In Poland, the anti-
trafficking NGO La Strada found that even nearly a decade ago 90 percent of Poles who
found jobs abroad did so through the Internet. The NGO estimated that 30 percent of the
trafficking victims it served were recruited this way.1
Technology is not just used in monitoring and recruitment, but also to sell the sexual
services of trafficking victims. This is primarily done through online classified websites.
The site most used for doing so—at least since Craigslist closed its adult services section in
2010—is the classified ad website, Backpage.com. Yiota G. Souras of the National Center
for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), testified before the Permanent Subcommittee
on Investigations of the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government
Affairs, on November 19, 2015, that more than 71 percent of suspected child trafficking
reports submitted by the public to the NCMEC’s CyberTipline involve Backpage.com. (This
does not include reports Backpage makes to the CyberTipline.)2
In March 2016, the U.S. Senate unanimously voted to hold Backpage.com in civil contempt
of Congress3 after the site failed to comply with an October 2015 Senate subpoena that
required Backpage.com to provide, among other evidence, documents on its procedures for moderating and reviewing advertisements, metadata, and document retention. The
Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations reported it found evidence that the site
sometimes edits classified ad content before publication, such as deleting words and images.
This likely served, said the committee, “to remove evidence of the illegality of the
underlying transaction.”
In order to combat the use of classified advertisements, online recruitment/job postings,
forums, and chats that facilitate modern slavery, the Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency (DARPA), an agency of the U.S. Department of Defense, has developed a
sophisticated search engine called DIG (Domain-specific Insight Graphs) Memex. Unlike
Google or Bing, DIG Memex plunges into Deep Web depths—web sites not indexed by
1 Council of Europe, 2007. Trafficking in Human Beings: Internet Recruitment, Misuse of the Internet for the recruitment of victims of trafficking in human beings. Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/anti-trafficking/sites/antitrafficking/files/trafficking_in_human_beings_internet_recruitment_1.pdf. Accessed July 18, 2016. 2 Testimony of Yiota G. Souras, Senior Vice President & General Counsel, National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, before Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (Nov. 19, 2015). 3 S. Res. 377 of 114th Congress (March 17, 2016).
traffickers are often steps ahead. In 2012, President Obama implored all techies to join the
fight against human trafficking:
…We’re turning the tables on the traffickers. Just as they are now using technology
and the Internet to exploit their victims, we’re going to harness technology to stop
them. We’re encouraging tech companies and advocates and law enforcement—and
we’re also challenging college students—to develop tools that our young people can
use to stay safe online and on their smart phones.4
Many private technology companies were already on board—applying their expertise and
funds to disrupt and combat human trafficking. For example, in 2011, Google gave $11.5
million in grants to support anti-trafficking technology initiatives, including those driven by
Polaris Project, the International Justice Mission, and Slavery Footprint.5 By this time
Polaris was already a veteran in using technology to find and aid human trafficking victims,
having launched the NHTRC crisis and tip reporting hotline in 2007 with specialists capable
of answering calls in more than 200 languages. The 24/7 hotline receives roughly 100 calls a
day from a variety of victims and survivors, concerned friends and family members, worried
neighbors, and organizations wanting to know how best to serve human trafficking
survivors. Overall, says Polaris Director Kimball, roughly 50 percent of the calls received
are high indicators of human trafficking. The other 50 percent are considered moderate
indicators, lacking the essential elements of force, fraud, or coercion. Since its inception, the
multimodal hotline has received 107,982 phone calls, 6,550 web form contacts, and 7,667
emails that resulted in the identification of 25,791 human trafficking cases—26,102 victims
had high indicators of human trafficking, while 27,187 had moderate indicators.
Polaris and other tech-driven anti-trafficking groups are constantly amending their
approaches to include the newest popular technology. At present there is a proliferation of
communication applications that are changing the technology terrain—Snapchat, WeChat,
and Kakao Talk in Asia, but text messaging remains the most used smartphone feature or
application. A Pew Research Center 2015 survey that measured smartphone ownership and
demographics in the U.S.6 revealed that 97 percent of smartphone owners used text
messaging at least once during the course of the period surveyed. Younger American
smartphone users (ages 18 to 29) were particularly enthusiastic text messaging users with
100 percent of those surveyed using text messaging, compared to 91 percent using social
networking.
Since the NHTRC’s inception, callers could reach a specialist by phone, email, and web
form, but as time progressed, Kimball and her colleagues realized they needed to add texting
as a means of access, not only because texting is immensely popular, but also because, for
some victims, it is the safest way to contact the NHTRC. “People who are trafficked are
closely monitored and may not be able to speak to someone on the phone, but they may be
able to silently send a text message,” says Kimball. “We did not want that to be a barrier to
people reaching help. There are already enough barriers.”
4 Remarks by President Obama to the Clinton Global Initiative (September 25, 2012). 5 Dixon H.B. Jr., Human Trafficking and the Internet* (*and Other Technologies, too), The Judges’ Journal, American Bar Association, Vol. 52, No. 1 (2013). 6 Smith A. and Page D., U.S. Smartphone Use in 2015, Pew Research Center (April 2015), http://www.pewinternet.org/files/2015/03/PI_Smartphones_0401151.pdf .